If I were a carpenter.

Ta-Nehisi Coats:

[W]e are, in the main, ordinary people living in plush times. We are smart enough to get by, responsible enough to raise a couple of kids, thrifty to sock away for a vacation, and industrious enough to keep the lights on. We like our cars. We love a good cheeseburger. We’d die without air-conditioning. In the great mass of humanity that’s ever lived, we are distinguished only by our creature comforts, but on the whole, mediocre.

That mediocrity is oft-exemplified by the claim that though we are unremarkable in this easy world, something about enslavement, degradation and poverty would make us exemplary. We can barely throw a left hook–but surely we would have beaten Mike Tyson.

I am reminded of when past life regression was somewhat en vogue, also vision questing. Apparently in our past lives we were all princesses and pirates; our guardian animals are bears and eagles.